Discuss Tennyson as a representative poet of his age. Discuss in the light of his poems.

Lord Alfred Tennyson, as he is called, was a poet Laurette
of the times. He was indeed a major poet of the Victorian period so much so that the
period is often called 'the age of Tennyson'. Apart from the creative influence, the
experiments and the immortal qualities of his verses, he is a representative poet of the
times because in his poetry we get a glimpse of the multiple dimensions of the Victorian
temper.

1. He is often called a belated
Romantic. Hisinfluence on the Pre-Raphalelites was so strong that they are often called
the sub-Tennysonian school. His treatment of the Victorian complacency and langour is
important in poems like Lotus Eaters.

2. His elegy In
Memoriam and Maud and Other Poems are important documents of the Victorian religious
problematic, the disillusionment with the Christian theory of genesis as becoming
manifest with the discovery of the fossils and so on. The evolutionary problematization
looks forward to the Darwinian situation.

3. His portrayal
of the new scientific spirit, the culture of materialism and hypocrisy and the
adulteration of mother nature are all important motifs of the times in his poetry e.g.
Idylls to the King.